He will succeed Bishop Anthony Bosco, 76, whose resignation was accepted by the Pope.
Lawrence Brandt was born in 1939 in Charleston, West Virginia. After elementary school education in Pennsylvania, he studied at the Josephinum in Ohio. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, in 1966, and completed his theological studies at the Gregorian University, Rome.
He was ordained a priest in 1969 for the Diocese of Rapid City, South Dakota.
Following ordination, he attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and, beginning in 1973, was assigned to successive diplomatic service on behalf of the Holy See in Madagascar, Germany, Ecuador and Algeria.
He left the diplomatic service for family reasons in 1981, and was incardinated in the Diocese of Erie. He served as vice chancellor there before returning to Rome to complete a doctorate in canon law at the Lateran University. Besides serving as chancellor of the Diocese of Erie, he served as pastor of St. Hedwig’s Church there.
The Greensburg Diocese, in southwestern Pennsylvania, has a Catholic population of 183,000 out of a total population of 682,000.
